‘He understood, all too well, that life was a vicious cycle with no future, just a dead-end spin of time. He reset the brim of his gray felt fedora and smiled the way a crab crawls: low and stingy.'

‘New York wasn’t a city as much as it was ledger of buildings, streets, and backroom proposals. It serviced five million-plus people through agencies, factories, showrooms, shops, schools, speakeasies, houses of ill repute...’